A Muslim woman was sitting next to the Christian woman in the pew. She reached out and whispered, "You are the true original people here, and we are sorry for what has been done to you in the name of Islam."

These words, printed in the New York Times three weeks ago, have buoyed up my spirit ever since.

The Muslim woman who spoke them did so at a Mass in a Christian church in Baghdad. She and some other people of her faith had gathered to express support for Christians who were being forced out of their native country.

Just days before, those Christians living in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, had been driven out of their homes. The city had been overrun by ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Members of this fiercely violent group were prepared to murder any Christians who refused to become Muslim. Most fled the city, leaving all of their possessions behind.

Other Christians who were living in Baghdad were worried that soon no people of their faith would be left. It must have come as a great relief that some Muslims in the capital city reached out to them.

Two parts of the Muslim woman’s statement would have had special meaning for the Christians.

First, calling them "the original people here." This refers to the historical fact of the ancestors of these Christians. Scholars say these people first settled in parts of what is now Iraq, not very long after the time of Jesus.

Their religious traditions bring them back to those early Christian centuries when the Apostles and others who knew Jesus did not seem far removed in time. This history is, of course, anathema to ISIS. Its members are ready to ruin whatever parts of this great tradition they can reach.

You can imagine what it must have meant for the people in this Christian church to hear their tradition recognized with respect.

The second essential part of the statement was the apology. The Muslim woman expressed regret that other Muslims were treating Christians so badly.

The actions of ISIS would seem to violate all that is important in the Islamic faith. To force non-Islamic people to abandon their religion, and threaten them with loss of life if they don’t, surely goes against all authentic religion.

This applies to Islamic people of all parties, as that faith’s authentic leaders will surely witness.

Of course, I am painfully aware of what Christians have done to non-Christians in many parts of the world at various points in history.

Among the many instances of this treatment I think of the Crusades, first begun in the 11th Century.

What future awaits the Christians of Iraq remains to be seen. Already large numbers of them have fled the country and become refugees. Soon, it seems, there will be few of their churches and other relics of their faith left in this violated country.

Page 2 of 2 - I have Jesuit friends who worked long ago to enhance the education of Iraqis; they must themselves now feel a strong sense of loss. The young men they educated at Baghdad College and Al-Hikma University were mostly Moslem. And these students felt strong appreciation of their Christian teachers.

But, in the late 1960s, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party predecessors expelled the Jesuits from Baghdad. This qualified as an earlier and less violent act of intolerance.

The American role in the invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the terrible blunders of our time. The forced departure of Christians from their homes and churches is only one of many horrific outcomes of this error.